Data Recovery Freeware

When To Use Data Recovery Freeware?
Data recovery freeware is an excellent idea to try in a few very specific circumstances. There are no guarantees with any commercial data recovery programs, freeware or not, however. The circumstances under which the use of freeware might be a good idea would include:
• When loss is due to human error or virus. Freeware is generally very adept at restoring files that have been accidentally deleted or damaged during a virus outbreak on a machine. Be very certain that the problem is a result of this type of issue before using, however.
• When money is at a premium. Data recovery freeware costs users nothing to try. If a good program is selected, it can have very good results and save a wallet a great deal of potential pain.

When To Avoid Using Data Recovery Freeware?
Data recovery freeware is not always the advised route to take to restore lost or damaged files. There are three particular scenarios where it can be beneficial to seek out different options. They are:
• When hardware failure is suspected. Freeware is generally designed to address software-based problems. If a mechanical crash is to blame, another route is typically advised.
• If installation is required to run the program. Good freeware recovery programs will run off the Internet or a floppy. The process of installing a program might damage all chances of recovering lost information.
• If the maker is unknown. Make sure to select data recovery freeware that is highly recommended by others. Check on computer user boards and other similar outlets before selecting a program.

Why Consider Freeware At All?
Data recovery freeware is an excellent option under the right circumstances. If files are lost due to accidental deletion or because of programming issues, these programs can work wonders. With some paid programs and professional services costing a great deal of money, many people find freeware is the best place to start. Many people start here and then work up to paid-for options if the effort doesn’t pay off with a recovery.

Which Data Recovery Freeware To Use?
The best place to look for data recovery freeware is on the Internet. A simple search should net some results. If higher recommendations are desired, try checking out computer troubleshooting web sites, message boards and other similar locations.

Data recovery freeware can provide the perfect solution to fix damaged or lost files. It does pay to tread lightly when considering this option. Sometimes the cheapest or even free option may not be the recommended route to take.

Helpful tips for using data recovery freeware
1. If your drive is making strange noises or reports a CRC read IO error, DO NOT PROCEED. This indicates a hardware failure so your data is not going to be recoverable using “undelete” style data recovery software.
2. As soon as you realize your data has been deleted, stop using the computer! The less activity the better to avoid dangerous disk-swap activity.
3. Find and download data recovery software on another computer.
4. Save the recovery tool to a flash drive and run it directly from there.
5. Save the extracted data back onto the flash drive for added safety.

Data Recovery Freeware:

1. GParted Live CD aims to be fast, small in size (~50mb), and use minimal resources to get that disk partitioned the way you want it. GParted Live CD is based on Gentoo-catalyst, and uses Xorg, the lightweight Fluxbox window manager, and the latest 2.6 Linux Kernel. The CD also offers the following programs: parted and fdisk vi, ntfs-3g, partimage, testdisk, Terminal and Midnight Commander. GParted is written in C++ and uses gtkmm for its Graphical User Interface (GUI). The general approach is to keep the Graphical User Interface as simple as possible.
URL:http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/

2. KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. It can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it.
URL: http://www.knoppix.net/

3. The Ultimate Boot CD will be of great help if you want to run floppy-based diagnostic tools from CDROM drives, consolidate as many diagnostic tools as possible into one bootable CD. Avoid digging into the dusty box to look for the right floppy disk, but simply run them all from a single CD.
URL: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

4. Undelete Plus is a quick and effective way to retrieve accidentally deleted files, files removed from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from a network drive, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down.It works under Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating systems. The program supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives.
URL:http://www.undelete-plus.com/

5. The Magical Jelly Bean Key Finder is a freeware utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install windows from your registry. It has the options to copy the key to clipboard, save it to a text file, or print it for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Windows Vista, Office 97, Office XP, and Office 2003.
URL:http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

6. Ghost for Linux is a hard disk and partition imaging and cloning tool similar to Norton Ghost. The created images are optionally compressed and transferred to an FTP server instead of cloning locally.
URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l

7. USB PC Repair Kit is a list of programs. The programs are loaded onto a USB Pen Drive to help fix your computer. The Kit contains the programs that can tell you if you really need to reboot after installing a program or permanently erase sensitive data from your hard drive that may still exist after using the windows delete feature.
URL: http://www.dailycupoftech.com/usb-drive-systems/3/

8. TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software. It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting your Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.
URL: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

9. FSBackup is a shell script that automates the execution of backups using the tar archiving utility. It is designed for use by technically knowledgeable users (programmers, system administrators, or other power users), for backing up a small network or individual computers.
URL: http://www.fullspan.com/proj/fsbackup/#introduction

10. SuperDuper is a program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper’s built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. And it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs. It is an indispensable tool, specially if your hard drive starts making that horrible clicking noise, your most important day-to-day application isn’t working with the system update you just applied, or you need to restore a stable copy of your system, but don’t want to lose what you’ve been working on, or other similar cases.
URL:http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

11. Corruption Corrector is a program designed for fixing corrupt files. It is for situations when you have (downloaded) many copies of the same file, but all of the copies are a bit corrupt. If the corruptions are in different parts of the file, it is possible to combine the good bytes from each file and get an uncorrupted copy of the file.
URL: http://ccorr.sourceforge.net/

12. Myrescue is a program to rescue the still-readable data from a damaged hard disk. It is similar in purpose to dd_rescue, but it tries to quickly get out of damaged areas to first handle the not yet damaged part of the disk and return later.
URL: http://myrescue.sourceforge.net/

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Windows 7 – How to safely remove a device blocked by the System process with a handle on $Extend$rmmetadata$Txf

I have an external HDD which I would like to “safely remove”. Unfortunately, my system (Windows 7 x64) complains that “the device is currently in use”. Using Process Explorer I discovered which process is holding a handle on the device: Obviously, System is not a process that I can just kill and be done with…

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CD Data Recovery

It is not the end of the world. It is no longer the end of your life or the world if you had just lost your favorite photos, music files or any important information. With this method – CD Data Recovery, your lost information can be completely recovered in most cases.

This method can help you to recover your data if you have lost your data on a CD-R, CD-RW or DVD. What are the reasons for data lost or failure on a CD?

1)  Due to virus attacks.
2)  Lost partitions.
3)  Configuration errors.
4)  The performance of the drives when reading the files to the CD.

The above reasons make the recovery of data on a CD often complicated, but rest assured that there is always hope for recovering your lost data.

There are some software that are able to help you to recover your data from a CD. Some of them are fully automatic and simple rewrites the lost files back to the hard drive, recovering missing or lost data from documents, images, and even applications.

They are cheap with high level of success. It also does not overwrite the files on the CD, which often can cause problems.

Another software such as “Multi Data Rescue” are used by many IT experts to recover their lost data from CDs. This program is usable in the Windows interface and is considered to be very user friendly. It can be used to recover data from CDs and DVDs, supports digital media recovery, and can even recover data from memory cards and USB related data issues.

With so many programs in the marketplace, CD data recovery is no longer about trying the impossible but rather about getting your lost files and documents back as soon as possible.

Recovering in a quick manner is what all it matters right now though it is no longer a concern how much data had been lost.

Having said that, technology can be both a blessing and hindrance at times, but in the end, there are always tools to help us out. There will more and more advanced programs to help you to recover your data fast.

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Data Recovery: Just Do It!

Data Recovery: Just Do It!Read the following tips on how to diagnose your hard drive crash and determine which recovery options are available to you. Differing causes of drive failure require differing solutions.

To find out if your drive is suffering from a physical crash or software problems, look at the lights on your hard drive. If there’s no light activity at all, or if you don’t hear or feel the disk spin inside or hear strange buzzing or different sounds than normal inside the casing, your disk crash is, in all probability, due to physical problems.

Option I: Hard Drive Boots

If you are still able to boot up your system, try booting from your recovery disk.

Many PC packages come with a disk recovery system. If you are able to boot from your recovery disk, click the START button on Windows and go on command line mode. Try running chkdisk or defrag to see if this fixes your hard drive. Oftentimes, formatting problems and disk fragmentation leads to drive crashes/corrupted disks.

After you have defragged your problematic drive, run your antivirus program and see if it cleans out any viruses. In many situations, viruses can corrupt your operating system or key drivers leading to system crashes. See if this takes care of the problem.

If your data is located in undamaged folders, copy them onto a CD or USB drive and make a list of all your applications. Make sure you know where to download your applications or where you stored the original copy.

If you cannot find your data, or it was stored in a corrupted location, don’t panic! To recover your data, try one of the many data recovery softwares available on the Internet today. These software packages help you restore your disk partitions, folder structure, or even recreate folders so you can find and recover your data.

If you cannot recover your data with data recovery software, skip to options III. Make sure to exhaust all your options before you go and seek professional help since professional data recovery assistance can come with a hefty price tag.

Once you have your data and your applications ready for reinstallation, “wipe” your disk and reinstall your OS. Make sure that your OS is patched with all its current updates.

Option II: Hard drive doesn’t boot but the drive still has blinking lights.

In this situation, plug in a spare working hard drive into a USB port or on a vacant controller slot on your motherboard. In the case of inserting a new master drive into your desktop PC’s chassis, make sure you rearrange the controller jumper on the main board so that it recognizes the new master / slave settings of your hard drives. Upon boot up, get into the boot settings of your computer and set up the new drive as the MASTER and the non-booting drive as the SLAVE.

Once you’ve booted, run your recovery disk and run chckdisk/fdisk and defrag on your slave disk. Follow the rest of the steps and options outlined in Option I above.

Option III: Hard drive is physically damaged!

If your drive has physically crashed, you may still be able to recover your data, even if physical damage has occurred.

Physical hard drive damage usually involves problems with the disk motor or the disk reading head is physically misaligned and fails to work. Sadly, physical damage often means that some of your data might be permanently lost. Just because your hard drive has suffered physical damage, don’t automatically assume that the only solution left is to go seek professional help. Try the tips below first before seeking professional data recovery.

Can you still boot but your PC is really slow? If this is the case, install and use data recovery software to isolate your data and load it onto a storage device like a USB stick. Once you have archived your data and make an inventory of your installed applications, take out the drive and replace it with a new drive.

Does your hard drive make a weird noise? Strange noises are indicative of hardware problems. However, if your drive still works regardless of the noise, install and use data recovery software to find and move your data before you replace your drive.

If none of the options above don’t apply, it is time to seek professional data recovery assistance. Professional data recovery services are not cheap. The cost goes up based on the amount of data you want recovered. Since this situation involves the outlay of substantial amounts of money, here’re some tips to help you select the right data recovery company.

Tips for finding the right data recovery companies:

  • Do a search for data recovery on the Internet. See if there are existing unbiased reviews of your service provider. Avoid services that have too many negative comments from many differing sources.
  • Check your online business better bureau to see if the company you are considering is a member in good standing or have some complaints against it.
  • Ask the company if they have any guarantees. Legitimate data recovery companies DO NOT give guarantees as to how much data they can recover. It is okay if they give estimates. However, it is suspicious if they give out guarantees.
  • Ask if you can pay by credit card. Credit card payments give you some measure of protection because you can chargeback your card if the data recovery service turned out to be a rip off.
  • Get a clear idea of WHEN you will get results. Many companies drag out results over several weeks. Make sure you see eye to eye with the service provider regarding deliverables and timelines.

In closing, a hard drive crash, as traumatic as it can be, is not a death sentence. Make sure you are aware of your do it yourself and professional data recovery options. Keep the options above so you can save time and money. One final note: always remember to back your data up either yourself or by using a data backup software. Do it early. Do it often. Just Do It!

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